
Voiceitt lets people with speech impairments use voice-controlled technology
Voice-controlled technology like Amazon Echo, Siri or hands-free features in Google Maps are things we’re starting to take for granted. But as Mary Meeker’s 2017 Internet Trends Report noted, voice ...
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Four Reasons Augmented Reality Will Change Assistive Technology
In our analysis, we found that more than 600 articles on AR and assistive technology have been published since 2000, many within the past 5 years ...
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How To Change Design Exclusion: A Guide To Inclusive Design
A short while ago I was researching for a project where I was designing an inclusive saucepan. After observing my mum, who is a wheelchair user, struggling to use saucepans ...
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A Seven-Foot-Tall Designer Re-imagines Public Space
Wouter Corvers envisions street infrastructure created for people of all shapes and sizes ...
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New sensory Paralympic medals created for Rio 2016 for visually impaired athletes
A built-in rattle is the surprise addition to the brand new 2016 Paralympic medals. When shaken, each medal has a slightly different metallic sound; with gold having the loudest, down ...
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How Apple Made The Watch Work For Wheelchair Users
In America alone, there are more than 2.2 million people who depend upon wheelchairs to get around every day. But most wheelchair users aren't active. They're more sedentary, on average, ...
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Samsung presents the ‘Blind Cap’ for Paralympic swimmers
Samsung have teamed up with Cheil Spain to create the first swim cap that automatically alerts blind swimmers to turn around or arrive at the finish line via Bluetooth technology ...
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BRAILLE BRICKS
A toy building brick can be whatever you imagine it to be, or even something you've never imagined. Braille Bricks is an experiment that transforms these bricks into a tool ...
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Crutches finally redesigned after 100 yrs
With a hinged arm cradle that can be unlocked and a hand grip that rotates out of the way, your hands are free to use for better things ...
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Crutches are finally getting a redesign after 150 years
Anyone who had to use crutches know how painful they can be. This is an inconvenience to every crutch user, but presents serious problems to long-term and permanent users. A ...
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These Gloves Can Convert Sign Language Into Spoken Word
University of Washington sophomores Thomas Pryor and Navid Azodi demonstrate their "SignAloud" glove, which converts American Sign Language into written and spoken text. The invention won a 2016 Lemelson-MIT Student ...
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Building Fitness Trackers That Work For People With Disabilities
Fitness and weight tracking can help stop obesity, but for people with disabilities, they often don’t work at all ...
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Whill receives FDA approval for the Model M, its new mobility device
Japanese startup Whill’s Model M, a motorized wheelchair alternative, has received clearance from the Food and Drug Administration in the United States. This means that the Model M can now be ...
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Smart Shoes Help the Elderly and Disabled Walk
New high-tech shoes and insoles have been developed that can help elderly, ill and disabled people walk without fear of falling over. Unveiled at the Wearable Technology Show in London ...
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Include or lose: Design for the whole market
Ever had trouble shaking ketchup out of a glass bottle? Now imagine struggling to unscrew the lid of a marmalade jar every breakfast time because you don’t have the strength ...
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Toyota Introduces Wearable Device For The Blind
Toyota is exploring its catchphrase, “Let’s Go Places,” from an unexpected angle. The Japanese automaker has developed a wearable device aimed at assist the blind and visually impaired. It’s a ...
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Smart Robots Make Strides, but There’s No Need to Flee Just Yet
It may not strike everyone as the loftiest ambition: creating machines that are smarter than people. Not setting the bar terribly high, is it? So the more cynical might say ...
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Holly Cohen’s TED Talk: Occupational Therapists as Hackers and Makers in Accessible Design
Bill Gates and Steven Spielberg were in the audience as an occupational therapist talked about accessible design. The forum was TED2016, where Holly A. Cohen, OTR/L, ATP, SCEM, CDRS, program ...
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Tommy Hilfiger Launches Adaptive Collection for Children With Disabilities
Now, children of all abilities can wear Tommy Hilfiger clothing. A nonprofit organization called Runway of Dreams worked with the brand to launch an adaptive version of select styles from its children’s line, which will ...
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The Neglect of Disabled Representation in Advertising and Graphic Design
Though policies have helped in many ways there is still a visual disparity when it comes to the representation of the disabled in the industry of graphic design. This paper ...
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Rite Aid Now Offers Talking Prescription Labels
Rite Aid announced today the nationwide availability of talking prescription devices to assist customers with visual impairments. The device will be provided at no cost to customers who are blind ...
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Mum Of Autistic Boys Creates Dolls That Seek To Encourage Acceptance Of Disabilities
A mother of two autistic boys has created empowering dolls to encourage acceptance of children with disabilities. Maria Kentley, from Melbourne, Australia, started the Hope Toys line last year in ...
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Disabled musicians create music from brainwaves
Four members of a Paramusical Ensemble, who are unable to talk or move, are using ground-breaking technology to create music with the power of their minds. The University of Plymouth ...
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Shopping cart invented by Alabama mom going nationwide in Target stores
Caroline's Cart, the shopping cart for special needs children created by Alabaster mom Drew Ann Long, will soon be found in Target stores nationwide. The retail giant has been testing the ...
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How Polling Station Design Could Influence Elections
Poorly designed polling stations could discourage some people from voting. Time to adopt a universal design standard. Today, an estimated half a million people in New Hampshire will go to the ...
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Lego unveils its first disabled figure
The Danish toymaker has unveiled its first ever disabled minifigure on Thursday. The figure of a hat-wearing boy in a wheelchair was first spotted at the Nuremberg international toy fair ...
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Wheelchair accessible tuk-tuk debuts
The maker of a new tuk-tuk prototype retrofitted with a wheelchair ramp hopes to usher in a new era of wheelchair-friendly travel in Phnom Penh. Ian Jones, a consultant for ...
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Want Toys With More Diverse Abilities? There’s #ToyLikeMe For That
Last year, journalist and creativity consultant Rebecca Atkinson noticed a striking absence of disabled characters within her kids’ massive toy collection, so she did a little digging; she discovered that, outside of the ...
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Wheelblades
Manual wheelchair drivers often experience reduced mobility in winter snow and slush; Wheelblades address this problem. Wheelblades are small skiis that attach to the front wheels of a manual wheelchair ...
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Pneumatic tech could bring affordable full-page braille tablets to reality
Suppose you had a tablet that only displayed one line of text at a time. It would be pretty frustrating, but it's a limitation that blind users of braille-displaying devices ...
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New Food Scented Fragrance May Remind People with Dementia to Eat
The sense of smell is closely tied to memory, a fact that designers made use of when they developed Ode, a fragrance disperser designed to help people with dementia remember ...
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Tableware designed for Alzheimer’s patients
No one ever wants to see loved ones suffer in their later years. Not everyone takes the time to do something about it. For Sha Yao, watching her late grandmother's ...
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Year in Review: The Coming Age of Automobility and What it Means for Designers
This year has seen steady movement towards a new age of automobility. Headlines celebrated the introduction of Tesla's Autopilot system. We experienced the first widespread vehicle recall due to hacking ...
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2015’s most intriguing innovations
Emerging technologies offer new opportunities to address challenges for all people, including people with blindness and other disabilities. In 2015, interesting technology trends included wearables, voice recognition, smart devices, drones, ...
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Students, People with Different Abilities Collaborate on Adaptive Design Solutions
Eyeglasses can be colorful, elegant and make a fashion statement. They become an extension of a person and reflect the wearer’s personality. Viewed over time, they blend in ...
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How wearable technologies can change the lives of people with disabilities
Wearable technology is not a new idea; for example, people have been wearing hearing aids for decades. Technological advancement in the use of sensors, cameras and algorithms are facilitating more ...
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This Life-Changing, Low-Cost Artificial Knee Is On The Market After Years Of Design
The ReMotion Knee lets people in the developing world share some of our advanced prosthetic technology, but at a price you can afford if you make $4 a day ...
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As Aging Population Grows, So Do Robotic Health Aides
The University of Illinois roboticist recently received a $1.5 million grant from the National Science Foundation to explore the idea of designing small autonomous drones to perform simple household chores, ...
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Seoul Design Week features minority-friendly design expo
Seoul Design Week, which opened at the Dongdaemun Design Plaza (DDP) and COEX, Wednesday, features a large expo of minority-friendly designs, among other design exhibitions and festivities. The "2015 Universal ...
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Adjustable Bathroom Equipment at Newbridge on the Charles
This brief video features a revolutionary style of adjustable bathroom equipment installed at Newbridge on the Charles, a 268 bed Continuing Care Retirement Community in Massachusetts. Sinks and other components ...
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A New Smartwatch That Detects Seizures and Emotional Stress
Like many health conscious Americans, Dr. Rosalind Picard wears a fitness tracker on her wrist. But hers doesn’t just track steps, it has an extra sensor that gathers medical information ...
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For ‘Sesame Street,’ Character On The Spectrum Years In The Making
Meet Julia. As you might have heard, she’s Sesame Street’s newest muppet. She has bright orange hair, big green eyes and sometimes takes a long time to answer questions. She’s has ...
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Empathy in Product Design: Connecting Human-Centered Design & Engineering
Line//Shape//Space shares the experiences of many designers and engineers to illustrate the growing recognition of the importance of compassion in product design. Timothy Prestero, CEO of Design that Matters, explains ...
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Wearable device for blind individuals developed by Toyota
Toyota made clear that the device will help "help fill the gaps left by canes, dogs and basic GPS devices by providing users with more information about their surroundings" and ...
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Expanding Access to Assistive Technology
Assistive technology professionals that work in the field, including rehabilitation engineers, therapists and others, have noticed a growing number of people who do not consider themselves as having a disability ...
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Stanford researchers using Google Glass to help children with autism
Google Glass’ software learns to identify people’s faces and their emotional expressions — what project founder Catalin Voss calls “action units” — and then classifies them with specific words. This ...
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THE 17-YEAR-OLD WHO MAKES WALKING SAFER
Mary Hood was worried that her 85-year-old grandmother, who walks with a cane, could fall and get hurt. So she developed a smart cane that vibrates in its users' hands ...
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Shepherd Center Tests Wearable Technologies to Help with Memory Problems and Stress Reduction
There’s no doubt that wearable technologies, such as smartglasses and smartwatches, are cool. But can they be useful to people with serious medical challenges, such as acquired brain injury or ...
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